My father has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. As you know, it’s an infamously hard major and involves rigorous study of math and physics. Well, he can’t even do high school math! I find it ridiculous how he could just forget everything he learnt in college. I’m in AP Physics, and I expected him to be able to understand everything really well. Well, he didn’t know anything about physics. Like how is that even possible? He graduated in 1992 with a good GPA and worked as an engineer for a long time. He then got an MBA and got into management. He doesn’t remember anything from his MBA either.
Is this normal??
Do adults just forget most of the stuff they learnt in college?
What’s the point of studying in college is you don’t retain anything?
What’s something you took a couple years ago and haven’t taken again? For me, it would probably be history. I took history classes DURING HIGH SCHOOL. I just finished my freshman year of college. How much do you think I remember? (Hint: very little.)
It’s just how the mind works. If you don’t use something regularly, you’re going to lose it.
That explains it…
I know humanities are easy to forget. But how could someone who studied advanced math and physics not be able to do precalculus and basic trigonometry? I find that unreasonable
Early onset Alzheimer’s?
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As you know, it’s an infamously hard major and involves rigorous study of math and physics. Well, he can’t even do high school math!
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seriously?
Well, I guess if he’s been working in management, then he hasn’t used his advanced math skills, but you’d think he’d remember at least thru Calc I.
Why would humanities be easier to forget than STEM? I’ve learned Newton’s Method twice now, haven’t been tested on it either time, and could not tell you how to do it.
To answer your question…yes, people forget most of what they learn in high school and college unless they use it everyday. Many things you learn are so technical, that is was hard to even learn just for a short test. College is not just to memorize and regurgitate at will. It is to learn how to learn, to learn to be comfortable with not knowing something and research it.
I can’t even remember what calculus IS.
Are you perhaps making the mistake of not understanding what he’s telling you–that you need to learn this stuff yourself, not count on him to teach it to you?
However, if he needs to relearn it for some reason, it will probably come back more quickly and easily the second time.
Enjoy your youth. Getting old is a drag.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” --Mark Twain
High school math is a lot more difficult than it used to be. In fact when I was helping in the classroom for my kid’s second grade math class, I had to get him to explain a few things to me (yes, with an engineering degree). His second grade math was far more complicated than my middle school math classes. If you don’t use something, you often forget it, but you can pick it up far quicker if you have to relearn it. You tend to forget things that were boring to you and that you don’t use. Plus many people learn things just for the class and quickly dump them from their brains. Some people remember things forever. Getting old sucks.
And the physics they teach now is different than the physics they used to teach. There’s a lot more stuff now.
If they don’t remember anything, did they actually learn it (in the first place?
Is it? You can test yourself using these on-line placement tests:
http://math.tntech.edu/e-math/placement/index.html
https://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/placement-exam
@JustOneDad I can only assume he learned everything. He graduated with a good GPA :-/
I took calculus and physics for architecture - and then two semesters of statics as well as structures courses devoted to wood, steel and concrete. What I remember from physics/statics: F=M*A and “You can’t push on a rope.” What I remember from calculus - it’s a technique that helps measure areas under curves, which for some reason is also good for measuring interest and some electrical stuff and how fast you let out the kite string. I’ve never ever used the calculus and it’s gone except for the sense of wonder I got at the poetry of it when I grasped its elegance. I can size a beam, though I use computer programs to help me. Don’t ask me to tell me what the moment of inertia really is though. I remember more of the history and lit I studied. It tends to come up more often.
As an engineer, I can say that rarely (if ever) did I use calculus on an in-depth basis once I was working. I was learning calculus at a time when calculators were just making their appearance and those that were available were very basic (basic functions plus roots and squares). We still used log tables, etc. for most of our calculations. As a result, everything was done long hand and (at least in my opinion) we understood the roots of math more thoroughly than many students today. Even so, once I was out in the work force, I just didn’t have to use calculus on a daily basis at all. To top it off, programmable calculators came along and it was simple to program our calculators to do so much of the thinking for us. I have 4 children who I have tutored through math classes now, and especially with the first one, I definitely had to relearn a lot of the material before I could help my kids. I will say that I picked it up and understood it all fairly easily, and even better, was able to relate the material to actual every day events that my kids could relate to. Physics was the same- I had to relearn in order to help my kids. Most engineers end up practicing in a rather narrow field and as a result end up using math and physics that is limited to that area. In addition, each generation is taught math in a slightly different method and students are often required to use that method on tests. There were many times that I looked at my kid’s books and told them there is a much easier way to do this, but had to relearn the material to be able to show them using that method. As far as physics being different than it used to be, I think that while some of the applications have changed, the basic principals have not. It is just a matter of having to use it (or any subject) on a daily basis in order to retain it.